What happened
President Donald Trump Thursday signed an executive order to release thousands of classified documents related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
Who said what
About 99% of the government’s roughly 320,000 documents on the JFK assassination have already been released, according to the National Archives, including in batches released by Trump during his first term and by President Joe Biden in 2023. Several thousand remain classified or partially redacted, including CIA files. Trump told reporters “everything will be revealed.”
Trump has “long indulged in conspiracy theories” about JFK’s 1963 assassination, The New York Times said. “The records will not reveal any smoking gun,” Tom Samoluk, who reviewed all the classified records in the 1990s under a government review board, said to ABC Boston affiliate WCVB. But “there will be some puzzle pieces that will be put back in that will tell a more robust and rich story.”
What next?
Trump directed officials to develop a plan within 15 days to release the “full and complete” JFK records, and 45 days to plan publication of the more dispersed records on the 1968 RFK and MLK assassinations. It’s not clear when the records would be released.